Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Regional Variations in the German Language

Speigel has created a fascinating visualization of regional variations in how people speak German. More than 670,000 people throughout Germany were asked which words they used for 24 common terms. The regional differences in their answers were then plotted on an interactive map.

To create the Alltagssprache map Germans were asked what words they used for various terms, such as pancakes, meatballs and chatting. The interactive map plots where Germans used different words for these common terms. The different colors on the map show were the various different words were used. The opacity of each color shows how common a particular word was used at that location,

You can use the forward and back buttons at the top of the interactive map to browse through the visualizations of each of the 24 tested in the language survey.